They should have developed the game for 6 months before the kickstarter and actually brought the neccessary proof of concept and eye candy to the table. Once concluded they should have then genuinely monetized the Alpha instead of continuing to offer the kickstarter rewards for a year at ludicrous prices. This would have ensured a far more consistent exposure, a more balanced community, generated better momentum in the media and among the various essential external communities (Steam et al) and ensured a consistent injection of cash.
But why? Is there not enough "fire and forget" early access alphas around? Also ED was in slow development for 6 year before Kickstarter. ED had actual goods to show during KS, with multiplayer combat which is now delivered to alpha testers - but not only that. In nutshell KS wasn't stellar success, but it wasn't failure you describe either, for community it worked beautifully. Also I see you are not in alpha - otherwise you would agree that wide alpha (as FD understands this name) is not nor practical, nor managable. I would like to point out that people already complain that FD cashes in on alpha, so there's clear contradiction here.
Instead they went Old School: which is a deprecated method of doing business in this industry. They closed ranks, limited information despite rapacious demand for updates and eye candy, encouraged a cliquey community based on a minority of middle aged fan boys with deep pockets and actively encouraged social division via a fragmented user base. The poorer majority of whom are simply excluded from various aspects because they haven't dropped a ton on vapourware in blind faith.
First, updates were a lot and very interesting. Space stations, traveling, ship design, sound design. cockpit....and so on and so forth. Everyone could watch Youtube videos and subscribe to newsletters by the way (even without becoming backer). Limited information? SC shows only ships at this point, and almost no footage of DFM. I wonder why.
Second, while DDF was place where majority of discussion happened, everyone interested enough could participate. Despite some arguing against DDF archive was created and lot of people outside DDF chimed in on lot of topics, and their input were valued quite a bit. For example, during in-system traveling discussion Mike Evans questioned lot of people outside DDF for reasons requiring now what we know as supercruise.
"Blind faith"? Social division? Do I really taste soar grapes here?
Also I will disagree with flooding people with information. There's such thing as over-saturation, and giving wrong first impression. People around net already talking that ED is just another space combat shooter.
Media exposure has been amateur hour bizarre: broadsheets? Some magazine nobody reads, because nobody reads magazines anymore? We're over a year in and we've just got a community manager for the forum. Who's first act was to run a competition that only a few hundred people can compete in? Again with the social apartheid. This forum has around 200 people actively engaged with it. From a KS pool of 40, 000. From a required potential customer base of over a million. Why a million? Because thats the minimum number of copies you have to sell in the first 12 months to keep the doors open. Where are these people? What do they engage with? How do we reach them and draw them in? Pro-tip: Offering £100+ Alpha access is not it.
And this is because ED is still in development, and no active sales are planned till Q4? Again, in my opinion, FD clearly plans to push for more PR efforts when normal beta closes in. Reasons for this are obvious - for example, at this point people see this is nice game, but ohh, alpha is costly, so no interest. Also to be honest, no way I would show alpha to common crowd at this point. It is just too buggy and messy and stuff gets fixed as we discuss here.
They rather worryingly don't seem to be listening to key feedback. You can almost imagine how the reviews will go: inevitible collapse of self maintained distribution servers on release day, dated graphics, don't like the flight model, controls with kb and mouse are tedious, combat is shallow, groups promote isolationism, sandbox is only for pve no true multiplayer ie this is not a social experience, gameplay is repetitive and much hyped procedural content offers only infinite boredom etc. Bottom line: if you like that sort of thing you'll want to buy this game I guess. 70%. Meta critic flop.
FD don't listen to feedback? In what kind of universe you live in? Of course they don't support any suggestion thrown around here, however they are very welcoming to constructive feedback, which has been resulted in much better game than any of us expected. Traveling? Check. Recent buzz with radar? They will look into it. Stuff floating around? also there will be slider. Seriously, what's wrong with you?
If they do fail they will have only themselves to blame. If you are in business to make money you don't do things like Frontier have. And ultimately the 'we are making our game' mantra is only an excuse for not maximizing revenue and buzz and a smoke screen for poor vision and leadership.
So far I have hard time to see how they will fail in long term. They have solid tech, solid backing from people from community, and they learn from their mistakes. And yeah, they are making their own game. I would say it has worked pretty well so far.